Brittney Lohmiller / Savannah Morning News - Goodwill employee Angela Wright scans in donated books to be sold at the Goodwill retail stores or through online sites like Amazon.

In recent time, Goodwill of the Coastal Empire has gone from just another nonprofit to an organization leading the way against area poverty and advocating for employment of the disabled, veterans and anyone with a barrier to employment.

Much of this began after Mohsen Badran was named CEO of the Savannah area Goodwill three years ago.

It also can be credited to the organization’s 850 employees and growing community support.

Since Badran took over, Goodwill has opened seven retail stores, with each store generating 15-25 jobs, he said.

In the eyes of many at Goodwill, the more important service has been the expansion of mission services, especially through the opening of nine job connection centers in the past three years.

“It all means one thing,” said Badran. “People are seeing that Goodwill is doing what it is supposed to be doing.”

The mission of Goodwill began in 1902 in Boston when the Rev. Edgar Helms began collecting donations and selling items for a profit that he used to pay employees, most of whom were immigrants or disabled.

By the time the movement came to Savannah, it was 1965 and 70 percent of all Goodwills were already established, said Badran.

Goodwill of the Coastal Empire is part of the parent organization Goodwill Industries International, said Badran, which oversees 164 other regional Goodwills similar to the one in Savannah.

Before the opening of the new stores under Badran’s watch, Goodwill of the Coastal Empire was operating only 12 others established during its previous 46 years of its existence.

While revenue from donations and retail sales funds most of its operations, Goodwill is not limited to just retail stores.

In fact, Goodwill holds janitorial contracts with local government buildings, military installations, the Georgia Ports Authority and private corporations, said Badran, while providing manufacturing services at Gulfstream and staffing services through its staffing agency, G-Star.

The list could go on.

Badran joined Goodwill 25 years ago, working as an assistant store manager before he worked his way through the ranks in the Goodwill of New York and Northern New Jersey.

When he moved to Savannah, he said, he noticed the multitude of opportunities that exist for Goodwill to extend its mission.

“Our goal is to make this Goodwill the best Goodwill in the Southeast,” said Badran.

In doing so, Badran and Goodwill collect and analyze monthly performance metrics such as expense to revenue ratio, job placement and people served and helped. These numbers are then compared on a per capita basis, said Badran, so Goodwill can see how it performs against larger organizations in the region, such as the Goodwill of North Georgia and Goodwill Industries of South Florida.

He said the diversity of the business model is what helps the nonprofit succeed.

The organization attains revenues from retail and contract operations and uses profits to fund mission services and expansion, which in turn creates more revenue, said Badran.

“Opening new stores is the engine behind all the services,” said Badran. “The business model is very successful.”

Goodwill of the Coastal Empire generated $23.9 million in revenue in 2013, a 20.7 percent increase from 2011 when the recent era of expansion began.

“If you follow this business plan,” said Badran, “you will not only survive, bust also thrive and help more people.”

A personal Goodwill

Jessica Callaway wakes up and travels to a donation center before driving to Goodwill’s Wilmington Island store to check in and promote a staffer, only to return to the main Sallie Mood facility.

Callaway is a district manager who oversees all of Goodwill’s 19 stores.

“Goodwill gives people a chance that they might not get in other places,” said Callaway. “They can start as program participant, sometimes, and then work their way in and sometimes hold a fulltime job for years at a time.”

Callaway, who has been district manager for three years after being a shift and store manager, says Goodwill stores are similar to any other retail store, except profits are used to fund the organization’s mission.

She meets with employees and customers on a daily basis and says the expansion of Goodwill has given her more opportunities.

“The more stores give me the ability to touch more lives,” said Callaway. “Simply put, the opportunity to do more.”

Each store is different, said Callaway, and a shopper is never going to see the same thing twice.

“A lot of customers almost know more about the stores than we do,” said Callaway.

She said she recently learned from a customer that the Berwick location has the best donations.

In 2013, Goodwill of the Coastal Empire retail sales increased by 9.2 percent, with more than one million transactions at an average of $11.87 per transaction.

Meanwhile, Goodwill’s “preferred customers” has jumped to about 58,000 customers in 2014, an almost 300 percent increase in the past two years.

Retail expansion

Goodwill used to receive a lot of federal and state funding, said vice president of donated goods Coni Curtas, but Goodwill quickly realized the need to expand retail operations when funding disappeared in the 1980s.

“It was very important that we became independent,” said Curtas, “because the funding was going away quickly.”

As Goodwill started to diversify its business model, its clients, or “participants” as Goodwill calls them, also changed.

According to Curtas, it wasn’t just disabled people who turned to Goodwill for help. Veterans, at-risk youth and immigrants started using the variety of employment and advising services the organization offers.

Now, Goodwill employs 375 people in the retail and donated goods sector of the organization.

As vice president of donated goods, Curtas negotiates leases for store locations and analyzes community needs as well as donor support.

She then chooses central locations that can serve the community and are convenient for donors.

“We’re always kind of looking at expanding all the time,” said Curtas. “That’s the way we’ve been since Mr. Badran got here.”

With 33 counties under Goodwill’s umbrella, yet with only 19 stores, Curtas said an opportunity exists for expansion of stores, attended donation centers and job connection centers.

“We don’t want someone to say ‘no, you can’t do that’ because the funding is not there,” said Curtas. “It all comes to expanding the donor base. That is the way people can support us, by providing us with financial donations and re-sellable donations.”

For years, said Curtas, Goodwill has had a voucher program with large organizations such as the Red Cross, but now, they are expanding the program into the local community.

When the time comes for organizations such as churches to handle or give donations, she said, they might not be able to fit desired needs or have the manpower or space to handle donations.

Now, churches in association with Goodwill can give donors vouchers that are turned in with donations, which are then given back to the church and given to people in need.

The summer months, said Tammie Blaha, vice president of corporate affairs, are a great time to do donation drives and set up voucher programs.

In 2014, Goodwill has hosted 19 independent donation drives, according to Blaha, that have resulted in the participation of almost 5,300 donors.

Mission services

Customization is the key element of mission services.

The job connection centers and staffing services are a part of the mission services, but it’s the individualized plans Goodwill develops which make mission services unique, said Brenda Pollen, interim vice president of mission services.

“For many years, we got it all wrong,” said Pollen. “We thought the need was to just put (people) to work. But it’s not that. It’s about getting to the root that could possibly pop up or hinder me from keeping the job or getting the independence needed to stay there.”

Goodwill of the Coastal Empire served 19,158 people through mission services in 2013, while it placed 1,672 of those participants in competitive employment.

Already in 2014, 1,043 people have been placed in competitive employment.

But Goodwill’s services, said Badran, are just one step in the process of gaining employment.

“Mission services allows us to place people, earn a job, earn a living, make new skills,” said Badran. “But, we’d like them to use the skills at Goodwill for a higher job, with higher pay.”

Mission services is the good will of Goodwill.

“Goodwill is about when Rev. Edgar Helms had this vision over 100 years ago,” said Pollen. “It’s about how many lives he could change, not how many things he could sell.”

Everything about mission services is free, from employment placement to evaluations to skills training, and is made possible by the support of retail stores, said Pollen.

“We started out as a dream with just one job connection center a couple of years ago,” she said, “We test piloted it to see if there is a need, and every year we have started more and more of them.”

Now, each new store has a job connection center, with a total of 10 in the area, where anyone can meet with a Goodwill employee who specializes in advising participants with job-related activities, such as building a resume, applying for a job or refining soft skills that can be used in interviews or on the job.

So far in 2014, said Blaha, the job connection centers have hosted a combined 33 job fairs.

Developing business

The people who clean local and federal government buildings, move cars and even work with aircraft are the products of Goodwill’s mission.

“All the work is run through an open bidding process,” said Cynthia Barnes, vice president of business development. “We had to get the bid and be the best … Goodwill competes just like the rest of the staffing agencies.”

In working with mission services, the organization provides outsourced janitorial services to local governments, as well as private corporations, said Cynthia Barnes, vice president of business development.

Goodwill bids for services in local and federal government buildings through the AbilityOne program, said Barnes, a federal program that sets aside jobs, like cleaning services, for people with disabilities or other significant barriers to employment.

One of the largest projects Goodwill is currently running is the staffing on Colonel’s Island in Brunswick, where G-Star staffing workers move vehicles in the automotive-based port.

At Gulfstream, G-Force Technologies, a division of Goodwill of the Coastal Empire, engineers, fabricates, and assembles 95 percent of thermal and acoustic insulation on G400, G500 and G650.

With the opening of new stores, she said, it allows Goodwill to affect more communities and spread Goodwill’s other businesses, contract and staffing services, into other regions of its 33-county area.

The temporary employment, said Barnes, gives opportunities to workers to show new employers their capabilities, such as reliability and consistency.

“Growth of the stores has opened up opportunities,” said Barnes. “It’s a good time to be at Goodwill.”

The grand scheme of Goodwill

Goodwill, according to its mission statement and Badran, is to be a nonprofit organization that helps people with barriers to employment.

The current poverty level in Savannah is 27.5 percent, Badran said, a mark that he says is unacceptable.

“More than one in four people you meet every day lives under the poverty line,” said Badran. “But, there is no one organization that is capable of fixing this problem.”

He said that working to fix the issue of poverty in the area is a collaborative effort of all area organizations.

He named United Way, Step Up Savannah, and the Salvation Army as organizations that work closely with Goodwill but said he would welcome other groups with similar goals to join the effort.

“We try to build an organization that is modern, in terms of infrastructure,” said Badran, “and relevant when it comes to challenges in community.”

He said poverty comes in four disadvantages — nutrition, education, transportation and working skills — Goodwill focuses on employment skills training, with hopes that it can impact the other three areas.

With cohesiveness among area organizations, Badran said area organizations will become effective at achieving more positive outcomes in regards to the socio-economic issues in the area.

“Savannah likes to see leadership, and when they see it going in the right direction, they will support it and follow it,” said Badran. “Goodwill is in great position to become the leader in the area, but we can’t operate alone.”